


Kindred Spirits

by KoroMarimo



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nazi Germany, Aromantic, Aromantic Relationship, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Asexuality Spectrum, Caregiving, F/M, Friendship, Lebensborn Mention, M/M, Nazis, Other, Physical Disability, Robotics, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 15:21:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14855285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoroMarimo/pseuds/KoroMarimo
Summary: It’s been two years since the tragedy in Berlin, and things aren’t looking up for Major in terms of rehabilitation.Doctor told you to prepare yourself for the worst, but nothing could have prepared you for this. The man you’ve shared a lifetime with may not be able to pull through and become his old self again, what more can you do except mourn the loss of your Max, a man who not a lover or a friend, but something beyond the latter that no one else in this world can understand except for the two of you.





	Kindred Spirits

**Author's Note:**

> Happy pride month! Let’s celebrate our canonically Asexual Marshmallow: Major Montana Max!
> 
> This is an Ace!Aro! Fic requested by a kind soul on Tumblr.

“That’s it Max. Just one step further and you can stop for the night. Please? One more?”

There was a hiss. A whir of machinery. Dead silence. He hadn’t mastered his facial expressions yet so the most his lips could do to communicate was turn up at the corners in a smile, his number 12 smile to be precise, so you knew he was in the worst kind of agony. Admittedly you weren’t the best at this nor the most qualified for the job as his nurse, but you were the only one Major permitted to help him. The two of you were confined to your joint quarters, a room which held a simple two person bed, a reinforced chair, and some peeling wallpaper that you never had time to change. Overall a depressing atmosphere that did little to relieve your moods.

“Please…” you coaxed, curling your fingers to beckon him over, “For me?”

Quaking like a leaf and letting out another hiss of air through teeth gritted in a permanent smile, he slammed down his left foot. A nonverbal “There, are you happy now you bitch?”, really the only way he could tell you anything. Turning to the two way mirror in the corner of the room, you could see very faintly the glint of Doctor’s glasses. He may have wanted to keep going, but he wasn’t going to get much more out of Major without killing him at this point.

“Amazing Max!” you encouraged the chubby automatized man. “Amazing! That’s almost halfway to the room, see how well you’re doing? You’ll be back to normal in no time.”

You rushed with his chair and helped ease him into it, if he were to collapse into the padded cushion he might break something internally that you wouldn’t be able to fix, or worse he could jar an organ improperly… He was little more than a delicate doll made of silicone skin, synthetic hair, and your advanced cybernetic techniques. Either way you had to be at his beck and call nearly 24 hours a day. It would be hard work in the beginning, Doctor had said. Major would have to learn how to do everything all over again, and you were told that in this scenario you’d have to imagine he was a stroke patient. Completely helpless for a while until he got used to the commands of his new body. How the Doctor managed this miracle you couldn’t begin to understand. Though you had made the vessel to carry out the tall blonde’s work, you couldn’t begin to understand the how or why. The most you could do was take everything in stride. This was Major after all, not a stranger, but someone close to your heart. It would be important to treat him with dignity in order for him to make a full recovery.

“You’re doing amazing!” You insisted with the biggest smile. “Soon you’ll be up and kicking my ass for all the times I’ve pushed you to the limit. Won’t that be fun Max?”

He looked up to the ceiling, and down to the floor. His way of nodding “yes”.

You laughed, trying to be lighthearted. So far things weren’t looking up. Major knew how to smile and move his legs but that was about it. His arms were still pinioned to his sides so he walked as though he was holding two heavy briefcases, and his depth perception was so poor you’d nearly had to break his fall several times. You had to be outfitted with the chip at about the same time the Doctor had begun the process purely for the necessity of your strength. Taking inspiration from his old body, Doctor had tried to cushion everything inside the commandant with whatever soft materials he could find, but nothing really worked all that well for a long time. Nor did the mad genius give his commanding officer enough time to adjust. Just when you had made some progress with him, Doctor had to go in and screw it up with his upgrades.

“I think I can let you rest for tomorrow.” You told him. “We won’t do physical therapy, but maybe we can work on talking again hm? I think with your ability to smile you should be able to open up your mouth and talk, provided that Doctor Butterfingers doesn’t screw everything up again. Right, Herr Komandant?”

Silence. The corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, his silent “ha ha”. Major can only smile back. Whether it’s pain or anger or happiness, you can’t tell anymore. All you can do is rub his shoulders and grimace while he follows you with his eyes. Frozen like a statue, probably going mad inside his own head or wishing the worst. You can’t imagine what his suffering is like… and you’re not sure you want to even begin to try.

“I promise it will all be over soon Max.” You insisted. “I’m positive you’re strong enough to get through this, and soon we’ll be laughing and talking together just as we used to do before. It will seem as though nothing has changed.”

You’re lying through your teeth. There’s no way to predict the outcome nor is there even any hope for his complete recovery. Doctor Avondale told you he might never be able to live normally. It breaks your heart into pieces to know that the things he held most dearly, his will and independence, might be gone forever with this attempt at saving his life. Death at the hands of the Soviets might have been far more merciful than the hell you and the Doctor put Major through. He can’t feel anything. There’s no way to replicate a sense of taste for him. Its been two years and he still can’t figure out how to move his head to look at you or to even tell you what he wants. Major will need modified versions of things like a catheter or a colostomy bag, all things that to a twenty eight year old man would be humiliating, especially if he was once the most respected little spitfire of the SS.

He doesn’t smile anymore. His eyes look away from you while his neck and head are positioned ramrod straight, contemplating the wall for an uncomfortably long time.

“Well… I guess I better get started then.” you sigh, looking around the room determining what needs to be done. You should really get started on cleaning up a bit, you’ve been so focused trying to help him that everything else has been neglected. Your clothes are scattered everywhere, his things are still in boxes, and if you’re going to live with him for these next stages of recovery, you’re going to make sure that you both at least live in a reasonably clean place.

You won’t deny that it hasn’t been easy. Working with your best friend and seeing him struggle to even breathe on his own was not something you thought you had to endure. Max had been joined to your hip since he was a young urchin living with his prostitute of a mother, relying on your table scraps to get by until he took care of the problem, entrusting only you with the secret as he climbed the social ladder of the Reich and made something big of himself (both literally and figuratively). You were there as his shadow, nearly all your friends teasing the two of you claiming you’d been childhood sweethearts which couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“They tell me we should get married.” He’d told you once at a party.

It took you a moment to process his words.

”Excuse me?!” You squeaked.

”They told me we should be married straight away and get to having children.” Major replied. “Lieutenant Klamp says it can be a big affair. Everyone will be invited, including HIM, and all his moustached glory. We’re a match made in heaven according to his wife. The spawn of the Reich’s Son and the most brilliant engineering mind of Doctor Avondale Napyeer will be the defining monuments to the Aryan Race.”

All of his Schutzstaffel cronies and their drunken arm candy had been badgering the two of you to death for the longest time, and it made your stomach turn. It had to have been the men behind this... Major pulling his puppet strings had earned you a chance of a lifetime, working on impossible things that no one else could understand with the greatest mind Germany had to offer. You’d thanked Major so many times for being given the opportunity, that his friends had taken your affection for him out of context. But the men hated you. To them you were an affront to the Reich’s ideals of the complacent German woman. You were highly educated, smarter than any two bid crybaby boy who licked the asses of geniuses in Doctor Napyeer’s caliber. To them, you were a pillar of promise they couldn’t wait to bring down.

“No offense Max.” You sighed, “But I’d rather swallow glass than get married.”

He’d laughed so hard he had a coughing fit and you knew he felt exactly the same way.

You loved him and he loved you, but it wasn’t romantic in the slightest on either side. You loved him more than a brother, beyond anything that might be called family. To you, he wasn’t the mighty Major, commanding officer of The Last Battalion. He wasn’t a medical miracle, nor was he even your patient. He was Max. He was there for you cheering as you went through university, while others including your parents said it was unbecoming. He was there in your room cowering in the dark as the streets echoed the shrill, venom laced screaming of the demon who gave him life. He was there for every birthday, every holiday, any time he could sneak away in childhood. No matter his commitments into adulthood he was still by your side, even when both your parents had been killed in an air raid. You were there for him for both funerals for his parents, hiding away with your arms around him as he laughed and laughed at the terrible things he’d done. With his connections and pull, Max gave you the authority and confidence to be able to look even Goebbels himself in the eye and tell him to go fuck himself with a bent tire iron. Now… he can’t reassure you, not even with a simple word.

You try to remain lighthearted. Keeping up a one sided witty banter with him that lasts from one day to the next. Often, you can get the closest thing to a laugh from him, but most days he’s shut in on himself.

“Remember Max?”

You spoke with your back to him, folding your clothes and unpacking all of his photographs. You wondered if he was listening, but you didn’t have the heart to turn around. Didn’t want to see him like this, not when every photograph he had of him in his handsome uniform was a painful reminder.

“Your friend, the tall one… I think his name was Wolfe, he said they’d make allowances for you if you wanted to marry me. You were the Führer’s pet, even if I didn’t have a pedigree like some mongrel bitch they said it was ok because you had done so much and accomplished so many great things…”

Your words weren’t enough to fill the void. You continued talking to yourself. Laughing because his friends had been so blind and stupid, believing everything that any higher officer spoonfed them about the Major and who they built him up to be. To think the son of a whore and some unknown sperm donor would be considered pure, it was ludicrous and even Major acknowledged it freely. You and Max would howl with laughter upon leaving parties or gatherings where men and women alike would ask if you two had slept together. The idea that either of you even held such thoughts was laughable. You were two peas in a pod, completely uninterested and amused by the fanatical believers who thought breeding like rabbits would benefit their country’s welfare.

“You were, and I quote, ‘The finest Aryan stock to emerge from the Fatherland in a lifetime’, weren’t you Max?” you cackled. “Any woman would have been lucky, no, blessed even to sleep with you and have a chance at your, ahem, ‘superior broth’ we called it. And what did you tell Wolfe when he asked if you were going to contribute your stock to the Lebensborn?”

“… glass.”

Your head snapped towards the sound. Every part of your body froze.

“W-what?!” You exclaimed.

Silence. There was only Major sitting in his chair looking solemnly at the wall and for a moment you thought you’d imagined it. That voice… He didn’t even have the upgraded speakers yet, so Doctor had told you to listen for a garbled recording that sounded too metallic to be human if the Major decided to speak. But that wasn’t metallic or artificial. It was the gentle, precisely calculated timbre of a man who could command the legions of hell in one breath and give you the strength to make it through any hardship in the next. It was the voice who told naysayers where to go whenever they hurt you, and it was the voice that you’d be able to recognize amidst a cacophony of screaming.

“Max?” you asked disbelievingly. “Did you…”

“I… said…”

You scooted back away from him. His mouth! His mouth had moved and tried to form the words and you saw it! If your heart had still been beating it would have stopped since now.

He tried again. Hissing an intake of air before opening his mouth painfully slow, pronouncing each syllable as though he was in pain.

“I said… I’d rather… Swallow… G… Glass.” said the Major.

The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile you’d never seen before, his eyes gleaming with mischief as you cried.

With a few more intakes of air through gritted teeth, he finally called your name.


End file.
